


oh, baby, please stay out of my dreams

by astarisms



Category: The Daevabad Trilogy - S. A. Chakraborty
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Nightmares, Self-Harm, i know my baby suffered and she had to do it all alone i know she did, this takes place right after the end of cob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27166177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astarisms/pseuds/astarisms
Summary: when she closes her eyes, she relives the worst night of her life again, and again, and again. so she stays awake.
Relationships: Darayavahoush e-Afshin/Nahri e-Nahid
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	oh, baby, please stay out of my dreams

**_Nahri watched in horror_ ** _ as the prince clambered back onto the boat, except it wasn’t him, not really. As if the night hadn’t already been enough of a nightmare, Ali’s eyes were an inky black, his complexion pallid and sickly, his body covered in a scaly, slimy, toothy variety of things found far below the surface. Water poured from him, and his movements were awkward, jerky, unstable, whispering something in a hiss too low for her to make out. _

_ Muntadhir stood, and there was something broken in his voice when he addressed his brother. Then Dara was there, his low voice warning the emir, his arm guiding Nahri behind him.  _

_ It was a mistake on Dara’s part, because Ali—or rather, this Ali-shaped  _ thing— _ turned, sniffing him out like a hound. He staggered closer, and suddenly she understood him, the mangled, whispered words. It felt like she herself had been dropped into the lake, the way fear turned her blood to ice, goosebumps raising on her arms.  _

Kill the daeva.

_ Before she could even open her mouth to warn them, though, Ali withdrew a rusted scimitar from his dripping robes, and as he turned she caught the crude, bloody symbol marked upon his temple. _

_ “Run!” Dara yelled before she could think to. But Nahri didn’t move, still reeling over the direction the night had gone, still processing what she was seeing in a horrified stupor. The arrow Dara fired disintegrated midair, and he grabbed for the weapon at his side, charging. _

_ But then the mark flared bright, a pulse of energy rippling across the deck of the ship, sending her flying back into a crate. The pain struck her first, the wet, sticky blood at her shoulder, and it took her a moment too long to realize it wasn’t healing, to realize that there was not just any mark carved into the prince’s skin— _

_ She clambered to her feet, though the scene before her made her want to collapse again. Dara on his knees, Ali’s scimitar raised above his head. He brought it down, knocking away Dara’s weapon, and then raised it again. _

_ He hesitated. _

_ And then he brought it down again, onto Dara’s left wrist, severing his hand from the rest of his body. _

_ He fell silently, fading as he did, his eyes catching hers. And then he was gone. _

_ She screamed. _

Nahri does not sleep.

The week following that night had been the worst. Wracked with grief and the tangle of conflicting emotions raging in her heart, she’d been too exhausted to keep her eyes open—but if she thought she’d find any reprieve in her sleep, she had been sorely mistaken. She’d woken every night, a scream caught in her throat, fresh tears welling in her eyes, the image of him meeting her eyes, helpless and apologetic, then dissolving to ash burned into her eyelids.

The repeated trauma had left her even more exhausted, and so she simply stopped trying. Instead, she had taken to the more productive measures of attempting to bring him back.

The failures had broken her even further. Each bloody cut into her own wrists that hadn’t resulted in him before her again had chipped away at a piece of her, until she was half-mad with the loss of him.

Nisreen had rallied her, pulled her back together with the knowledge of what was being done to the Daevas—her  _ people— _ for mistakes that were not theirs, stitched her wounds closed with threads of righteous anger and indignation, because anger is a less exhausting outlet than grief. Anger is easier to mold, and Nahri sharpens it even now, waiting for the day she can plunge it into the black pit she imagines Ghassan has in place of a heart.

The burning inside of her gives her a crutch to carry herself with, a mask to hide the sleepless nights and the shadows beneath her eyes too deep for her magical creams to help, because the nightmares are too much. They steal the fire within her, turn it to ash just as he had, and just as she had had to learn that relighting her fire altar was more work than keeping it going, so, too, had she learned that it was easier to stay awake, to not waste her energy when sleep will only drain her further, to keep her fire burning instead of rekindling it every morning following a restless night.

But Nahri knows that even as malleable and dangerous as glass is when at its melting point, when it cools it is only glass, and oh, how easily does it break.

**_Growing up in the streets_ ** _ did not offer many chances to overindulge. Chronically malnourished and long used to ignoring her own grumbling stomach, the sight of all the platters piled high with plump fruit and stuffed vegetables and roasted meats and freshly baked bread and spiced rice and syrupy pastries was more than enough to make Nahri’s mouth water and her insides twist painfully with hunger. _

_ She had never seen such extravagance and excess laid out all at once.  _

_ And so with all the grace and elegance her upbringing afforded her, she dug in abruptly without a care for the princess delicately plucking grapes off the stem across from her.  _

_ It was hard to stop herself. The meat melted in her mouth like butter. The vegetables collapsed easily, giving way to the rice and nuts on the inside. The fruits burst upon her tongue with a sweetness she hadn’t known fruit actually possessed. All of it was washed down with wine, and her head spun with it, a pleasant buzz that made her unsteady. _

_ She knew from her first experience with wine, drinking with Dara, that she should pace herself, but she was enjoying the decadence of it all too much to care for keeping track. _

_ But something about that thought made her uneasy, and she did slow, trying to pinpoint the reason. _

_ “I could not resist the urge to peek in my father’s court to see the Afshin before I came here,” Zaynab was saying, and there was something off about her voice, something far away and knowing, something that struck Nahri as cruel, though her head was too fuzzy to make sense of why.  _

_ As she chewed, though, the texture of the food changed, becoming gritty and dusty, and she reached for her wine again, choking on it. But she caught sight of her fingers as she did, and she blinked slowly at them, trying to make sense of the dark grey, nearly black smears that coated them, where before there had only been the grease of animal fat and bits of rice. _

_ She looked up, and startled at the sight before her. Where there had been the endless platters of mouth-watering foods, there was only piles of a black substance. In the breeze, they rustled, the top layer being swept up and away. She pushed back from the table, rising shakily to her feet. _

_ “What… what is this?” she asked, her tongue heavy, her mouth dry. She rubbed her hands hastily on her tunic, blinking rapidly at them and the grey stain to her fingers. _

_ Was it… ash? _

_ Zaynab hadn’t moved, smiling up at her, and Nahri tried to back away further, though she stumbled. But from her new vantage point, something winked at her, buried amidst the black. She hesitated, then leaned in to get a better look. _

_ An emerald. Set into a battered iron band. _

_ “Even more handsome than the legends say,” the princess said mildly, though Nahri hardly heard her as the pieces came together, the ash on the table, on her hands, in her mouth, on the boat— _

_ She heaved and vomited. _

Nahri tries all manners of potions and teas, exercises and extra lessons and time in the infirmary, to keep herself awake. 

Despite her attempts, the human—half human? Quarter human? More? Less? She doubted she would ever truly know—body was not meant to go as long as she had without sleep, and eventually her efforts were bound to fail. She just isn’t ready for it when it happens. 

There’s no amount of time that can prepare her for what she sees when she closes her eyes. There’s not a single memory of him that hasn’t been tainted by his death, not a single instance between them that doesn’t haunt her in her dreams. 

But she’s forced to reckon with all those moments in her waking hours anyways, after learning what she does, after learning the history he’d been so afraid to tell her. How does she reconcile the charming, blushing warrior who’d made her his mother’s food with the war criminal Ghassan had told her of, the one whose very name still invoked fear and revulsion in djinn to this day? How does she reconcile the man who’d joked with her—protected her, held her, kissed her?—with the nightmare incarnate who had taken so many lives for the crime of the color of their blood? The color of  _ her  _ blood?

She wonders at her own naivety, looking back. Had it not been there, in every haunted, shattered look? In the way he’d tensed when his past had been brought up? In the bitter resentment, the regret, the torment he carried with him that she recognized only now, too caught up in the thrill of whatever had been blooming between them before?

But then it’s the memory of his lips on her forehead, a brand as he’d thrown himself over her body in the Gozan, holding her and tensing to be drowned again by a river serpent instead of leaving her to die alone. It’s the memory of his hands, so tender as he’d wiped her tears away. It’s the memory of the way he’d looked at her, awestruck and reverential. It’s the way he’d joked when she was hurting in an attempt to ease her pain, winked at the Temple to soothe her nerves, guided her into the city despite his fear of it.

How could that man and the one she’d learned of possibly be the same? How could she love one knowing that the other reviled what she was? 

She doesn’t know. And now she never will.

**_When she finally gave up on sleep_ ** _ , after hours of tossing and turning and unexplainable dreams and the low rumble of thunder outside their cave assuring she would not get a restful night, Nahri sighed. She felt the heat of him beside her before she even opened her eyes, and though the rocky ground beneath them was inconveniencing at best and wildly uncomfortable at worst, even with the layers separating her from it, she could not deny that the dryness and warmth of their shelter was a comfort when compared to the low whistle of the wind and the pounding of the rain outside of it. _

_ She turned to look at him, and though the light was too low for her to see him properly, she knew he was awake, too. _

_ “Trouble sleeping?” _

_ He did not react to her, the dim glow of his eyes fixed straight above. _

_ “Something like that.”  _

_ A flash of lightning gave her her first good look at him in the dark, brief as it was, and though she was used to the practiced brooding of her companion, something about him was different tonight. Withdrawn. Remorseful. He looked like a painting, a work of art of some long-lost, forlorn hero of legend. Her stomach fluttered at their proximity despite herself. _

_ “I wish it were not raining. I would have liked to look upon the stars in case…”  _

_ “In case…?” He looked at her finally, those green eyes catching hers. _

_ “In case it’s my last night as a free man.” _

Ah.  _ As busy as they had been, with the whole running for their lives business, she had forgotten that grim little tidbit. Her chest ached at the thought.  _

_ “Do you really think you’re going to be arrested?” _

_ “It’s likely.” His voice was hushed, fearful, but Nahri was not practiced at being comforting or reassuring, so she did what she was good at instead. She teased him, though it was clear he didn’t appreciate her efforts to lift his spirits. She laughed, and without thinking, reached out for him. Only after did she realize the position she’d put him in. His eyes brightened in startled surprise, and her breath caught, heat rushing into her face. _

_ She began to withdraw, but then his fingers were brushing one darkened cheek, and though she knew it was stupid, knew it was reckless, knew that they  _ shouldn’t… _ she kissed him. _

_ Every protest and misgiving she had disappeared at the feeling of his lips on hers, soft and urgent, and Nahri felt herself begin to sink into him, ready to lose herself in him. But then he gasped, his hands tightening on her hips where he’d grabbed her, and though she was not much experienced in such affairs, she knew that this was a different desperation, one borne of fear rather than passion. _

_ She withdrew in alarm, though the light was still too low for her to see without straining. _

_ “Dara?” she asked, reaching for the hands she still felt grasping her, but her own passed right through them. He choked and, her heart beginning to race, she sat up, trying again. “Dara?” she repeated, her own voice rising in fear, attempting to touch his face now. She found his cheeks, though they were clammy, slippery with ash. _

_ His eyes were the brightest and most solid part of him—because now she could see that the rest of him was turning translucent again, like he had after the rukh—and they were lit with fear, with betrayal, and her chest tightened painfully. _

_ She scrambled off of his lap, towards the dying embers of their fire. _

_ “Wait, wait,” she pleaded with him, “We have fire, we have—Dara!” He faded, briefly, and she made another grab at his arm, holding onto him and trying with one hand to heal him as she had before, the other stretching blindly for the ashes beside them. _

_ But it was no good, because just as another flash of lightning illuminated their cave, he crumbled. One moment there, the next ash, his ring clattering to the ground, too loud for how small it was. The emerald glowed back at her, in mocking tribute to the way he’d last looked at her, as if this were her fault for brushing off his concerns about his own fate. She looked away, to her hand that had been wrapped around his arm only a moment ago. It was black with soot and ash. _

_ She choked on a sob, then shattered. _

It’s harder than Nahri could have ever imagined, trying to heal. To move on. To wrap his memory up in a neat little bow and store it away and get on with her life— _ truly _ get on with her life and stop having to pretend. 

She is exhausted. Not only from her continued efforts to sleep as little as possible, but from having to get up every day and act like everything is fine. To smile when she wants to cry. To laugh when she wants to scream.

But mourning is not a luxury she’s permitted, not as Ghassan’s prisoner, or the Banu Nahida, or even the conwoman from Cairo. All she can do is move forward, but even as she takes the steps, she feels as if she’s not going anywhere, stuck in one place. She’s only one person trying to meet the demands of three, performing from the confines of her gilded cage, and she wonders when it’s finally going to be too much.

Her entire life, she has been on her own. This should be easy as breathing to her, the return to it, but it’s  _ not _ because she’d let him in and he’d taken root in her bones and grown in between the empty spaces she hadn’t let herself notice before, and now that he’s gone she’s all too aware of them.

What does she do now, with all the scars he’s left her with? She can rebuild her walls, learn from her mistakes, and keep everyone else  _ out,  _ but that won’t heal the damage that’s already been dealt. It won’t take away the pain of his death, or the sleepness nights, or the ache she feels all the way down to her marrow that might be exhaustion or grief or both.

It won’t keep her from  _ missing him _ . 

She knows now that she can do this without him. She has Nisreen and Kartir’s guidance and their support. She has her own spite, her anger, her grief, a bitter concoction that keeps her going. 

But it’s hard to stomach that she finally has everything she’d wanted for herself back in Egypt—that she’d found  _ more _ and  _ lost it—a _ nd now it feels like she’s trapped in a prison of glass, waiting for a stone to be thrown, for her to lose everything else. It’s hard to stomach, that she’s in here—in his home, in this city that he loved and feared so much—and he’s not. 

He’s gone, and she feels more alone now than she ever had on her own in Cairo.

**_Her head pounded both with_ ** _ the bitter remainders of a hangover and the overwhelming sensation of being way too in over her head, and though his presence would have been a familiar comfort amongst the vast array of unfamiliar and uncomforting things she was experiencing at the moment, the sight of him in travelling clothes with a bag at his side quickly diminished any warm feelings she might have held. She narrowed her eyes at him, barely repressing the urge to scowl, and only because she knew the action would have done no favors to the fading but still steady hammering in her temples.  _

_ She watches as he works his charm on Nisreen, ridding her of the room with a few smiles and well-intentioned promises, and despite herself, Nahri feels a flutter in her stomach. But then he turns back to her, and she lets her face fall again. _

_ “Tell me why you’re dressed like you’re going somewhere.” _

_ Because he couldn’t be  _ leaving _. They had just gotten here, and he’d made her a promise, and they had unfinished business, and he could  _ not _ be  _ leaving.

_ “I’m going after the ifrit.”  _

_ And here she had so hoped he would prove her wrong. But despite her insistence that he had lost his mind, that there was no point in going after them now, not when they were supposedly safe in the city he’d been so set on bringing her to, he wouldn’t be swayed. _

_ He took her hand as he explained why he had to go, much more calmly than she herself was capable of being when faced with the prospect of being left alone in this city she had hardly believed existed before she’d set foot in it only a day ago, or of him rushing into danger, as he was so prone to doing, and not returning to her. _

_ The thought terrified her, shaking the last bit of her composure. Tears sprung to her eyes, and she watched as his expression crumbled, his explanations doing little to assuage her fears or the twinge in her chest she could attribute to nothing else but missing him already. He caught her tears with his fingertips, his skin scalding against hers, begging her not to cry, making an ill attempt to cheer her up. _

_ Though it didn’t work, it did remind her of herself, and she pulled away, embarrassed at the loss of control over her emotions. _

_ “Fine,” she said, because there was nothing else to be said if he was so set on this wild goose hunt. “After all, you brought me to the king. That’s all you promised—” _

_ And then his hands were on her face again, guiding her eyes back to his.  _

_ “Stop,” he cut in, and she both wished he would kiss her again and knew he wouldn’t, though that didn’t stop her stomach from doing flips at his proximity. His thumb brushed her lower lip, and for a moment, he only gazed at her, his expression torn. And then his brow levelled and his jaw set. “I’m coming back, Nahri. You’re my Banu Nahida. This is  _ my _ city. Nothing will keep me from either of you.” _

_ And for a moment, she believed him. For a moment, with the promise in his words and the conviction in his eyes, she was placated, if only enough to stop her tears. _

_ But then he flickered, and faded, and the brief respite that exchange had provided her gave way to fear. _

_ “No,” she whispered, grabbing for him, and then repeated it, her voice rising in panic. But it was too late, and it happened too fast. His eyes lit with the same terror she was sure was mirrored in her own, before he collapsed in on himself, turning to ash. _

_ Shell-shocked, Nahri sat in the midst of his remains, shaking, his last words ringing in her ears.  _

_ Nothing would keep him from her, but death itself. _

_ Her tears welled and fell again. _

Sometimes Nahri feels as if she had died that night, too.

She has never been one to idealize death. There’s too much she wants to do, too much she wants to see, and no matter how hard it had gotten for her, there was never a moment that she wished for the ease of death over life’s hardships. There are too many beautiful moments, woven between the bleaker ones, that made it all worth it.

And though she still clings to that belief fiercely, it’s become harder to find such moments. The sunrise over Daevabad might have been one of them, once, if the sight didn’t leave such a bitter taste in her mouth now. Oh yes, there’s the lingering undercurrent of awe, the one she had experienced when she first arrived in the city, but it’s swallowed now by something darker, some part of her that festers and writhes. 

How special is a sunrise when it only serves as a reminder that she has to get up and do it all again after another sleepless night?

Still, she finds herself in the garden outside the infirmary every morning to watch it, trying to feel  _ something _ that’s not so negative. She watches the light wash over the trees and the flowerbeds, feels the sun warm her skin, listens as the world comes alive around her. For a moment, it almost works. She feels lighter, unburdened if only slightly so from her grief.

And then it crashes down around her again when she remembers that he had loved the sunrise, had woken with it often. It had been a comforting ritual, as much so as starting a fire to be near its warmth, even if he didn’t require it.

Would that she had listened to his worries and sent him away at the city gates. Would that she had known enough about him, about this world, to realize it was not ready for him yet. She pulls her shawl tighter around her shoulders, that familiar, creeping despair crawling over her skin, squeezing her heart.

_ He made his choices, _ she thinks, more savagely than necessary in an attempt to ward off her own guilt.

But then she looks at the sun, inching higher and higher in the sky, and wonders if it’s her fault he will never see one again.

**_She had wanted it to be a good day._ ** _ She had been so eager to see him again, to speak with him again, since everyone seemed so determined to keep them apart, and she had been looking forward to it for days.  _

_ But of course what Nahri wanted was never taken into account in the Creator’s grand plan, and her mood soured quickly. The old priest helped to ease some of her fraught nerves, his kind eyes and sure words a comfort in this city where she’d found little others, but reassurances from a stranger, well-intentioned as they might’ve been, couldn’t make all of her worries disappear. _

_ When Dara joined her finally, it was hard to summon the excitement at their first moment alone in weeks, despite all he’d promised today would bring. And her trepidation was quickly validated, when he started spouting nonsense about marriage and Jamshid e-Pramukh. She had expended all of her energy for worry, for sadness already though, and now she was angry.  _

_ But anger never had boded well for them. They were both too stubborn, too passionate. She should have known that the moment she let it consume her that things would not end well. _

_ With him on his knees before her, she felt some of it ebb away, enough to force out her rough, unrefined version of a proposal. _

_ “ _ I’m not alive,” _he interrupted, and_ _ she started, shocked enough at his proclamation that she could only watch as he dropped her hand and stood, her heart beating in her ears, so loud she only caught the end of what he was saying. “...my body is likely nothing but ash on the bottom of some ancient well.” _

_ Ever the pragmatist, she replied without hesitation, over the tightening in her chest, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me.” _

_ “It matters to me. Nahri, you know what people are saying here. They think you’re a pureblood, the daughter of one of the greatest healers in history.” _

_ “ _ So? _ ” And she hated that sinking feeling that told her she already knew where this was going. She hated that should could read his face well enough that she could tell he was going to break her heart.  _

_ “So you’ll need children. You deserve children. A whole brood of little Nahids as likely to pick your pocket as heal an injury. And I…” There was a moment where he faltered, where she saw him fragment, and it stole her breath. “Nahri… I don’t bleed. I don’t  _ breathe _...I can’t imagine that I could ever give you children. It would be reckless and selfish of me to even try. The survival of your family is too important.” _

_ And just like that, her anger returned, hotter and fiercer than it had before. Could she have nothing she wanted? Her damned bloodline had made her more of a prisoner than the holy leader they kept attempting to paint her as. And her anger made her irrational as she threw up her walls again, made her sharper, and her next words were meant to cut.  _

_ They landed, and she spun, ready to leave him there and be done with him. But there he was, there he always was, standing before her instead of behind her now. _

_ “Nahri… Nahri, wait. Please.” As she met his eyes, the rest of him flickered, like a candle in the wind, and she blinked, alarmed. But he didn’t seem to notice, reaching out for her.  _

_ “Dara?” she asked, and his hand passed through her arm. This time, he realized something was off. His expression lit with fear.  _

_ “Don’t leave like this,” he whispered, and she panicked, trying to catch him as he stumbled, despite the transparency of him, despite knowing it would not work. _

_ “Dara, what are you—” _

_ His face twisted, contorting with pain. And then he was gone, only ash and an empty emerald ring that looked as if it belonged in the room down the hall. She stared in utter incomprehension at the spot where he had just been standing. _

_ And then she fell to her knees.  _

Nahri opens her eyes, more exhausted than she had been when she laid down. There are no tears left for her to cry. There is not enough breath in her to scream.

She pulls herself out of bed, because it is all that she can do. She will not give them the satisfaction of watching her break.

Not again.


End file.
